MANILA, Philippines?There?s no rest for the weary.

Barely had ?Ramil??the third typhoon of the month?left the country after an erratic, weeklong juggernaut, another potential storm is brewing in the Pacific.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) announced on Sunday it was watching a low-pressure area, but it was still ?too early to tell? if it would head for the Philippines.

If it does, the weather disturbance will enter the Philippine area of responsibility by Thursday and possibly hit central or southern Luzon, said PAGASA deputy chief Nathaniel Cruz.

?Right now, we are monitoring it 24/7,? Cruz told the Inquirer by phone.

?We should not just think of Metro Manila or northern Luzon because at this time of the year, storms hit the Visayas, southern Luzon, central Luzon, and up to parts of Mindanao,? Cruz said.

PAGASA had issued 30 severe weather bulletins in the past week on Ramil, internationally designated as ?Lupit.?

At 5 p.m. Sunday, the weather bureau posted its final bulletin on the storm on its website.

PAGASA said Ramil slightly slowed as it moved farther away from the country, traveling east northeast at 15 kilometers per hour, with maximum sustained winds of 95 kph and gustiness of 120 kph toward Okinawa in Japan.

Tropical Storms ?Ondoy? (international codename: Ketsana) and ?Pepeng? (Parma) earlier struck the country, leaving nearly 1,000 people dead in widespread flooding and landslides and causing billions of pesos in destruction to infrastructure and agriculture.

Traffic jams

With Ramil?s departure, trucks ferrying vegetables to La Trinidad in Benguet province caused massive traffic jams on the main national road Sunday.

Motorists and commuters took more than two hours to traverse the 5-kilometer road, instead of the normal 15 minutes.

The road, part of the Halsema Highway, the province?s main vegetable route, runs through the middle of the town and lies between the Benguet State University campus and this town?s strawberry fields.

Chief Insp. Mario Mayames Jr., La Trinidad police chief, said close to 6,000 vehicles pass through the town daily.

?The roads here have really become constricted. There are too many vehicles to control to ensure smooth traffic flow,? he said.

Mayor Artemio Galwan said the road traffic was a good economic indicator. ?These cars and trucks give us the confidence that we are moving ahead,? he told the Inquirer.

Elsie Gis-it, president of the Cordillera Vegetable Trading Post Traders Association, said trucks crowding the public market indicated that life was going on for people depending on the trading post for livelihood.

Trading post alive again

There are more than 3,000 people doing business at the trading post daily?porters, drivers, farmers, traders, packers, disposers and helpers.

La Trinidad suffered a setback when Pepeng damaged the town?s vegetable farms and strawberry fields. The vegetable trading post also became deserted when vegetables failed to arrive following the landslides that closed the Halsema and Marcos highways as well as the Naguilian and Kennon roads.

Traffic jam during rush hours was also a problem in Los Baños town in Laguna province, with a portion of the municipal road connected to the national highway still flooded waist-deep and impassable from the earlier back-to-back typhoons.

Commuters passing the national highway observed that from the usual 10-15 minute traffic in the area, it takes them 30 minutes or more to pass the junction during rush hours before 8 a.m. and at 5 p.m.

The Municipal Social Welfare and Development Office said the houses of 2,210 families were still flooded. With reports from Delmar Cariño, Inquirer Northern Luzon, and Clarice Colting-Pulumbarit, Inquirer Southern Luzon